


trend

by Pokeshipping_Flash



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Best Friends, F/M, Flash Fic, Gen, Internet Famous, Male-Female Friendship, One Shot, Secret Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23905723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pokeshipping_Flash/pseuds/Pokeshipping_Flash
Summary: Misty finds out that Ash's reputation has earned him internet fame. Hints of Pokeshipping.
Relationships: Kasumi | Misty/Satoshi | Ash Ketchum
Comments: 1
Kudos: 36





	trend

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested in learning about the author or the stories that will be posted from this account, feel free to check out the profile or send a message.
> 
> Otherwise read and enjoy, and maybe leave a comment!

_Ooh, no_ , she internally groans, attempting to blink away the sight before her. Sadly, it’s still there and she’s practically ashamed to say she’s tempted to click on the hashtag sitting on her laptop monitor and see what results pop up.

But she really shouldn’t do it. Who cares what everyone else is saying? Who cares how they feel? Who cares what this will do to his ego, right?

And that’s what resides at the heart of her unease. When Ash Ketchum saw that his name was a trending hashtag on social media, he was going to have a field day and _she_ was never going to hear the end of it.

But her hands are quicker than her sensibility and she’s clicking the hashtag, which is linked to all the recent posts about him, cursing to herself afterwards but still not having the willpower to turn back before it’s too late to save herself.

‘Ash Ketchum’s Pikachu is so cute! They’re the greatest team in Pokemon training!’

_Oh. Oh, okay. Well, that’s innocent enough,_ she thinks to herself, eyes wide and then brow scrunching almost suspiciously. Could they all be that simple and unspecific? Ash’s ego couldn’t possibly be inflated by such a comment, and the poster behind it is right! Ash and Pikachu had always shown to be one of the most profound and selfless bonds between trainer and Pokemon!

‘Ash Ketchum’s been in the game too long to have such a small fandom!’

Um… what? _Fandom_? As in a community of fans? Ash-freakin’-Ketchum has **fans** now?

_Ooh, no,_ she cries to herself once more in incredulousness, taking a moment to hold her hands over her face as it flushes scarlet and breathing shallowly through her fingers. Then she cautiously spreads them apart and stares once more at the screen.

Misty scrolls down the feed a little more. There are some more comments on Ash’s team, photos of him standing in different stadiums or gyms, a few creepy shots of him minding his own business eating lunch or buying supplies. There are a couple of short videos of him battling other trainers - again, in the official capacity during gym or league title matches. Some of them are captioned with something along the lines of, ‘My commentary!! Ash Ketchum deserves to be champ! This entire battle is WHY!!!’

She stares at one of these for a few seconds, doesn’t dare to click the video and see what the person - the **fan** , she thinks ominously - has to say about her best friend. All she knows is… Well, Misty Waterflower will defend Ash Ketchum to the ends of the planet if need be… but if she were ever to get it inside her head that she needed to make video commentaries about his battle history, she’d have to take a dive.

The redhead continues scrolling a bit further. True, there are a couple more photos and even fewer videos, but the text posts take up most of feed by a long shot. Thankfully, while they’re all tagged with Ash Ketchum’s name, at least half seem to actually be about his Pokemon team or stats and nothing too personal.

And then… she suddenly sees it.

‘Ash Ketchum has SUCH a cute butt!’

_Wh…_ she tries to form the word but her brain fractures under the weight of this alarming post content. There’s no way… Who would say something like that about a stranger?! Who would post something so embarrassing for all the world to see?! _What is this?!_

‘Ash Ketchum’s smile always helps me start my day just right!!’

‘If you don’t think Ash K is the cutest thing since the discovery of SKITTY then your wrong!!1!’

No, wait! How do - did people really talk so openly about people they thought were cute? Just… post anything they want on the web so everyone can see it?! Could this many people really have a crush on dense, short Ash Ketchum, the sometimes whiny, always stubborn and reckless and–

“–What is **wrong** with people?!” she shrieks aloud, unable to help herself, though she immediately clams up, lips pursed tightly shut afterwards. There’s no way anyone heard her, right?

Alas…

“Ah! There you are, Misty! I’ve been lookin’ all over the gym for ya! I thought we were going to grab lunch? I gotta head back to Pallet after that so we don’t have a lot of time, ya know?”

She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even look at him as he approaches from her right. She does, however, very inconspicuously try to move the cursor on her laptop to the ‘close window’ icon in the top right corner of the monitor.

“Uh… you okay?” he asks, brow furrowed in what may be concern but she doesn’t have the mental capacity to dwell on it.

“J - just checking email,” she squeaks in half a second. And, well, that was originally the case before the host’s webpage had brought up that list of trending hashtags and stories on the right-hand side and she’d seen **the thing** and…

“Really? Anything good?” he asks, picking up his pace and leaning in over her shoulder so quickly her breath catches awkwardly in the back of her throat and her heart falters.

“Ash Ketchum has a cute…” he begins to read, eyes squinting at the small font on screen, yet Misty’s retaliatory response is to quick-scroll by thrusting two fingers against the trackpad, and the feed begins to descend at an accelerated pace. “Hey, what’s the big deal, huh, Mist?! That was about me!”

“I, uh…” she stumbles, face so red she feels faint. Thankfully, the ever-dense Ash Ketchum doesn’t seem to notice. “Whoops?”

“I wanted to know what they were say - oh, hey, this one’s about me too! Cool, lemme see!”

He leans in more, his shoulder nudging hers and his left cheek three inches from her lips. Half of her is delirious from the close quarters and half is stuck on how obviously she’s doomed in every way possible.

“Ash Ketchum… was one of the best contenders at the Kalos League last year! He and his Pokemon are goin’ places! They’re definitely gonna be champs one day!” his tone gets more excited the further on he reads, until he snaps backwards and reaches his full height again at the end. “Hah, look at that, Misty! People are talkin’ about me! Where’d you find this stuff? I should show my mom!”

Show his… mom? She can’t help staring blankly, blinking a couple of times. That was… That’s not what she expects from him. All he cares about is showing his mom? Just one short line about how people are saying good things? No derailing speech about how he’s obviously the greatest? He doesn’t even know what social media platforms are…!

She’s exactly two-point-five seconds into feeling overwhelming relief when he just can’t help himself.

“I didn’t know I had so many **adoring fans**! Wait’ll I tell Pikachu! We split up when we started lookin’ for ya! Man, I’m the best! Of course, right? I mean, everyone’s sayin’ it! I guess you’ve been wrong about me all this time! I kept telling you I was gonna be the number one Pokemon Master one day but you never believed me! Well, now…”

_Oh, god, this is how I’m gonna go, isn’t it? This is the end…_ she groans to herself.

“So now that everyone else believes me, how about you, huh?”

“Uh… What?”

“All this time and you never believed how great I was, Misty! But now tons of people are talkin’ about me so you gotta admit that I’m a really strong trainer! I’ve gotten really good after all this time, haven’t I?” His prideful grin is almost enough to make her retaliate but…

“I…”

Sure, Ash had often brought up to her how much he’d improved as a trainer in the past. When they battled here at her gym during his term in Alola, he’d tried a **few** times to get her to admit to how cool and strong he was but she hadn’t budged more than an inch in regards to his obvious progress. Part of her figured this was just part of their general banter - part of what made their relationship so tightly knit and unique… However another part of her had always just assumed he was fishing for compliments and had never really cared what she in particular thought. But now…

Now she thinks she may have been reading the situation wrong for far too long… and she’s a little flattered. So she can’t help thinking she owes him another couple inches of latitude after all their years together.

“Yeah, Ash, maybe so.” His grin widens at finally wearing her down and her own stubbornness naturally kicks in.

“You’re okay, I guess.”


End file.
